Saturday, February 20, 2010

Misc Saturday

It is snowing today. Grr. I won't drive my car in the snow - too much of a risk of someone crashing into it. So, I decided to get the heater working again. As mentioned here, the Crydom solid state relay was stuck closed. I happened to have a Tyco EV200AAANA contactor lying around. It handles 500A of current, so it is way overkill for the 3A or so max needed by the DC-DC converter. Oh, well. Here is the new contactor in the place of the Crydom relay:

I installed it, hooked up the cables, and turned the heater on - voila! Heat! So now, when it is cold but not snowy, I can drive around. I put a clamp-on ammeter around the HV cable, and measured 10A when the heater starts up, which decreases to around 5A as the heater warms up and the resistance increases (V = IR, after all, and V is constant). The updated PDF of the wiring diagram is in the usual place (nothing major changed, just replacing the Crydom with the contactor).

I also installed a goody I got from Electro Automotive. This was supposed to have been part of the original kit, but got overlooked somehow. They were gracious enough to send it to me gratis. It is a combo regen enable/disable switch along with a 3-position rotary "ECONOMY / NORMAL / POWER" switch. It hooks up directly to the 4 wires that have been dangling in my cabin for 2 years. I attached it where the radio would normally go:

Finally, I got around to attaching the door sills and speaker grills - these are what holds the carpet in place. I'd been frequently pulling the carpet back into position, and got tired of it. It took me about 10 minutes, I don't know why I put it off so long:

Also, earlier this week, I put a new rear-view mirror on. The original Porsche mirror would not stay stuck to the glass, so I went with a traditional after-market metal "button" and rear-view mirror combo. Works very well:

P.S. - this is post #100 to this blog. I never thought it would go on so long when I started...

About Me

I was a PSD Board of Education member from 1999 to 2007, and spent nearly 3 years as its president, from 2003-2005. I currently represent Fort Collins' District 5 as its Councilmember. In my private life, I'm a lead engineer with nvidia, a computer chip design company. I have converted two cars from gasoline to electric. Past hobby computer projects include Hoverball and Adventure Definition Language.